The previous Governor of Massachusetts, let’s face it, was a bit highbrow in his musical tastes—the son of a professional jazz saxophonist, Deval Patrick rarely referenced anything from the Billboard 100.

Charlie Baker, however, is shamelessly Top 40 in his tastes—stuck mostly in the classic rock that dominated radio of his teens and twenties, aka the 1970s and ’80s.

But Baker will also surprise you. He has a deep knowledge and appreciation for the Ramones, for instance, and has been known to jam out to classic R&B hits. He loves Green Day, and the Dropkick Murphys.

For the past year or so, the Governor has revealed his preferences on my Facebook page: he is a regular player in a song-category game I post there. (Example: What are the best songs whose titles begin with the word “My”?)

Baker began playing during last year’s campaign, and still finds time to check in, contributing answers and clicking “Like” for other people’s entries. I even caught him doing it on the evening of July 23, while most Massachusetts political players were watching the televised Boston 2024 debate. (He claimed to be “multi-tasking.”)

To give you a taste of his tastes, we’ve compiled a playlist of the 20 songs Baker contributed during the just-completed month of July.

Most will be familiar to anyone raised on WBCN: tracks by The Beaver Brown Band, Pat Benatar, The Doors, The Knack, Moody Blues, and Patti Smith. A few can only be forgiven if you lived through the ’70s: The Bay City Rollers’s “Saturday Night”; Olivia Newton-John’s “You’re The One That I Want”; and The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.” Perhaps nostalgia can explain “That Thing You Do,” from the movie of the same name. And he erroneously gave the title of a classic Squeeze song as “Pulling Mussels from the Shelf.”

Give Baker a little credit, however, for Archie Bell & The Drells; a Ramones deep-cut, “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl”; and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”—a rare foray into rap for the Governor.

The list also includes The Temptations classic “My Girl,” which gives me an excuse to roll out this clip of Governor Baker lip syncing to it at an Urban League street BBQ last September, with Darnell Williams, Robert Lewis, and some random guy. (Video used with permission of Nehemie Ca.)

You’ll find a little more range among the four dozen songs Baker “Liked” over the course of the month: Bananarama, Bobby Brown, Funkadelic, Lady Gaga, Mission of Burma, The Stylistics, Talking Heads, and Shania Twain are sprinkled in among the old AOR hits. Still, he tends to stay in his comfort zone. Baker skips over most alternative rock, and almost all hip-hop, country, and jazz vocalists.

Curiously, the Governor shows no love for one classic rock band that you might think would be in his wheelhouse: The Grateful Dead, famously favored by his former boss, William Weld.

]]>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/31/charlie-baker-music/feed/0Based on a month of Facebook interactions, here's what we know about the governor's taste in tunes.Snapchef, An Innovative Culinary Company, Moves to Dorchesterhttp://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/31/snapchef-an-innovative-culinary-company-moves-to-dorchester/
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/31/snapchef-an-innovative-culinary-company-moves-to-dorchester/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 19:47:04 +0000http://www.bostonmagazine.com/?post_type=bm-boston-daily&p=2005979

Snapchef opening in Dorchester. / Photo via Snapchef

About twenty years ago Todd Snopkowski had a problem finding help as a corporate chef.

He worked with temp agencies to help him staff larger jobs but the people they provided him were more suited for working on a construction site than in a kitchen. They knew how to use a buzzsaw but they didn’t know the difference between a French knife and a German knife. It was a frustrating problem for Snopkowski that he was determined to solve.

In 2003 he launched his answer to the problem: Snapchef.

Snapchef, now based in Dorchester, trains and places skilled kitchen workers in jobs at culinary companies all over the southern New England area. The company places approximately 190 people a day into jobs with companies like Aramark and Sodexo all over New England.

Their new headquarters in Dorchester will serve not only as the company’s main dispatching center but as a training center for new talent. Snopkowski says that one of their keys to success is employing and paying people like it’s a regular job, not short term temp work. The traditional temporary labor model does not work for Snapchef because it is fragmented. Plus, it does not always attract the best quality of worker.

“We hire for the right attitude,” said Snopkowski.

Even if they’re unskilled, he says, his company can use you as long as you are punctual and work hard. Plus, they’ll train you. While they have their share of people at the lower end of the culinary scale, they have plenty of skilled workers from Johnson & Whales and other schools with notable hospitality programs.

“We’re getting the cream of the crop,” said Snopkowski.

Every employee undergoes a thorough background check and is trained in the ServSafe food preparation programs in the company’s main kitchen and its new Dorchester classrooms.

Part of the reason Snapchef moved from their South Boston location to Dorchester is because they’re bursting at the seems. Their new space, in addition to including new dispatching and training space, features significantly more room for the company’s shuttle service. In addition to be a culinary service company Snapchef has to double as a transportation agency. Snapchef shuttles its workers to and from jobs in 27 company owned vans. The vans, Snopkowksi said, make it easier to organize workers but they also make them more reliable and punctual, another break from the traditional temp labor model.

With two additional offices in Worcester and Providence, Snopkowski is optimistic about the company’s future plans as they have secured contracts with the likes of the Intercontinental, Foxwoods, Hyatt and Children’s Hospital, just to name a few.

The true taste of summer isn’t a hot dog at the ballpark, nor a lobster roll on the pier: it is the ice cream novelty. Brightly colored, officially licensed, and the furthest thing a food can be from “all-natural,” the ice cream novelty is a real American treasure.

Below, a ranking of these touchstones of our childhoods, refined only to those displayed in little yellow squares slapped on the side of a rusty ice cream van rolling through your neighborhood. You’ll notice that several entries are cartoon characters with gumball eyes. While likely all concocted in the same Hoboken warehouse, wrought from the same not-quite-ice-cream, not-quite-ice popsicle matter, some of these treats are clearly better than others.

Of course, these rankings are wholly subjective. Feel free to tell us how badly we screwed up in the comments.

20. Fudgsicles

Kids who ordered Fudgsicles willingly are not to be trusted.

19. Popsicle Shots

A relative newcomer to the game, Shots were Big Popsicle’s answer to Dippin’ Dots, the caviar of sweaty mall people.

18. Frozen Lemonade Slide Pops

The frozen lemonade slide pop was only ever offered to satisfy the occasional mother who’d accompany a Fudgsicle fan to the ice cream truck as he darted through traffic to the tune of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” She would tell herself it’s the healthiest option, but who are you kidding? It’s five percent lemon juice and the rest fiberglass insulation.

17. Cyclones

Too much going on here. Cherry, lemon, and blue raspberry in the same pop is asking for trouble. QUIT PLAYING GOD, BIG POPSICLE.

16. Powerpuff Girl

(with gumball eyes)

Run fast and run far from the kids who ordered the Powerpuff Girl pop to eat Bubbles’ eyes out.

15. Spongebob Squarepants

(with gumball eyes)

For some reason, the Spongebob pop always melted the fastest. And because some popsicle #disruptor saw fit to put black popsicle matter beside yellow, the Spongebob pop invariably looked like Alice Cooper when exposed to direct sunlight.

14. Flintstone Push-ups

There is no ideal temperature for these things. Either they’re frozen solid and not budging, or by the time it melts enough to push, it’s already dripping down your hand. Poor engineering. This is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge of frozen delights.

13-11. Bugs Bunnys, Tweety Birds, and Ninja Turtles

(with gumball eyes)

As a kid, there were tremendous opportunity costs for picking a pop without a gumball. Picking any of these three ensured that you weren’t missing out on anything.

10. Hoodsies

A New England original. Had it not made the top 10, our site would’ve probably been the target of a DDOS attack from Revere.

9. Ice Cream Sandwiches

Sure, the humble ice cream sandwich wasn’t flashy and didn’t come with a gumball or trading cards. But you always knew what you were getting. Was it the biggest thrill of your afternoon? Of course not, and getting the chocolate wafer leavins off your fingers was a pain. But it’s the ice cream sandwich’s superlative consistency that sets it apart.

8. Drumsticks/Nutty Buddys

With chocolate, nuts, and sometimes a caramel core, there’s plenty here to distract you from the fact your parents wouldn’t take you to a real ice cream parlor for a real ice cream cone.

7. Choco Tacos

Alan Drazen created the Choco Taco in Philadelphia in the 80s. Since then, Philly’s cultural exports have included The Roots and little else. But need you anything else?

6. Firecrackers/Bomb Pops

Doesn’t get more American than these bad boys. Kate Upton is a noted fan, and the United States Men’s National Soccer Team styled their home kits after them. Though containing three separate flavors like the lower-ranked Cyclone, the beauty of the Bomb Pop lay in its simplicity: that is, it doesn’t look like Frank Lloyd Wright dropped PCP and broke into the Blue Bunny factory.

5. WWF/E Cookie Bar

If you were to walk up to an ice cream truck this afternoon and order one of these, Stone Cold Steve Austin would still be inexplicably laser-engraved onto one side of a vanilla ice cream sandwich with a stick shoved in it, as has been the case for the last 25 years or more. After the nuclear winter ravages the earth and armed marauders patrol the wasteland, their holy grail will be a cache of pre-World Wildlife Federation lawsuit Stone Cold cookie bars.

4. Shark

(with gumball eyes)

3. Chipwiches

It’s two chocolate-chip cookies and vanilla ice cream. Brilliant.

2. Strawberry Shortcake Bars

Scholars say the white and pink styrofoam crumbles coating the bar’s fluorescent pink center are technically “crunchies,” though it’s doubtful anyone has ever bitten into one of these and was greeted with a crunch of any sort.

1. Screwballs

A plastic cone filled with vaguely cherry-flavored Pepto Bismol slush and an indigo gumball at the bottom, the Screwball is the King of All Ice Cream Novelties. The Screwball combines the best parts of lesser treats into a Voltron of high fructose corn syrup. Like a brandy snifter, the Screwball works on the warmth of your hand, insuring that every tongue depressor-full of pink stuff is the perfect temperature for consumption. At the end, you drink the melted dredges and are rewarded with a gumball that, by now, has already lost most of its food dye coating. Do you care? Of course not. You worked too hard for that gumball.

Have a big purchase on the horizon but don’t want to drive to New Hampshire to save a few bucks on it? Well, you’re in luck.

The Massachusetts legislature just set this year’s sales tax holiday weekend for August 15-16. The sales tax holiday, seen by some as a gimmick and others as a boon for business, has been an annual occurrence for almost a decade with one exception during the economic downturn. The House and Senate approved the sales tax holiday on votes of 136-20 and 27-11, respectively, after a small but loud group of progressives in both chambers voiced their opposition.

“While the Massachusetts economy is continuing to improve, folks are still facing tough fiscal times. By passing the legislation, we reaffirmed our commitment to hardworking families, particularly as the school year begins,” said House Speaker Robert DeLeo.

The bill was enacted by both chambers on Thursday and is now waiting on Governor Charlie Baker’s desk for a signature.

Baker is expected to sign the bill.

Senate President Stanley Rosenberg approved of the legislation but gave voice to some of the opponents of the sales tax holiday in his prepared remarks on its passage. “I hope that we will soon review this policy to determine if, after more than a decade, the desired impact is being achieved,” said Rosenberg in a statement.

While the sales tax holiday is unpopular with some members for depriving the state of revenue for two days some see it as a huge relief for those on the lower end of the economic spectrum.

“The tax holiday is particularly valuable for lower-income earners who disproportionately pay more sales tax and could use a tax break now,” said Senator Eileen Donoghue, Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development.

“Suspending the tax in August leads to an increase in sales at a time when retailers could use a boost and allows families to save on a variety of purchases, including back-to-school items.” said Rep. Joseph Wagner the House Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development.

Massachusetts increased its sales tax from five percent to 6.25 percent in 2009.

]]>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/31/massachusetts-sales-tax-holiday-coming-august-15-and-16/feed/0Need a new big ticket item, but don't want to drive to New Hampshire? Well, your time is now.Boston 2024: The Winners and Losershttp://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/30/boston-2024-winners-losers/
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/30/boston-2024-winners-losers/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 20:56:01 +0000http://www.bostonmagazine.com/?post_type=bm-boston-daily&p=2005109

In the seven months between Boston’s winning, and subsequently losing, the United State’s Olympic Committee’s blessing, all kinds of people got sucked into its orbit. Of those people, some emerged victorious, while others were clear losers. Given that dealing with the bid required an Olympic effort, let’s now award some medals—or none at all—to those involved.

Gold

Chris Dempsey, Kelley Gossett, and Liam Kerr

On a shoestring budget, No Boston Olympicstook down the deep-pocketed power brokers of the city—a collection of well–heeled political consultants and corporate might. Will Dempsey and Gossett be able to find jobs similar to what they had before they challenged the city’s captains of industry? Maybe, but they’ll definitely land political work somewhere after this victory.

WBUR/MassINC Polling

Nothing had a bigger effect on the 2024 Olympic conversation than the monthly polling conducted by WBUR and MassINC. They drove the discussion around the Olympics without becoming a part of it. Steve Koczela consistently delivered impressive and thorough data for the public to dive into.

Gov. Charlie Baker

No politician played this thing better from start to finish than Baker. The governor kept the Olympic plan at arm’s length for months while public support for the bid gradually ebbed. Baker came out looking like a fiscal geniuswhen he waited until the release of the Brattle Report to decide whether or not he would back a taxpayer guarantee for the project. His approval rating remains sky high.

Silver

Robin Jacks, Jonathan Cohn, and No Boston 2024

The group comprised remnants of the Occupy Boston movement and other hard-left activists—now known as #10PeopleOnTwitter, thanks to Mayor Walsh—were relentless foot soldiers in the battle against the Games. What they lacked in money and access, they made up for in tenaciousness. They packed every Boston 2024 community meeting run by the City’s Olympics liaison,John Fitzgerald, and overwhelmed the Boston social media world with an anti-Olympics message that drove the news cycle. Their social media assault on the Olympics was personal and caustic at times and clearly got under the skin of some backers. In a small town like Boston, it was a very useful tactic.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo

The speaker has always been steadfastly protective of the state’s fiscal situation, sometimes to a fault. Of the Big Three, however, he showed his hand the most, expressing his frustration with the process and his concerns about exposing to taxpayers to risk. DeLeo smartly inoculated his membership on the Olympics issue when he allowed the latest budget to include language that gave the legislature significant oversight over the Games.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh

Polls don’t lie. Walsh’s citywide favorability never dropped below 63 percent, a number most pols would kill for in our era of division and hyperpartisanship. Time will tell how this difficult period of the Walsh years is remembered, but for now, he’ll be seen as the guy who stood up for his city in the face of bullying from the USOC. Walsh got out in front of this end of the Olympic bid before it was sent to the woodshed by the USOC. While attentive observersand the media saw it as a slightly hollow gesture, the public at-large may have seen it as smart.

Bronze

Widett Circle Property Owners

Who knows when Widett Circle property owners’ payday will come, if ever. The prospect of an Olympic stadium rising there, and the subsequent creation of a brand-new neighborhood blandly named Midtown was exciting. But without the Olympics catalyst, it’s hard to envision a project of that magnitude happening in the next ten years. The rough concept for how to do it though has been drawn up.

Evan Falchuk

With the Olympic bid’s collapse, the United Independent Party’s leader loses a huge opportunity. A prolonged battle over a ballot question would have helpedthe gubernatorial hopeful raise the profile of his new faction and himself. There would have been televised debates, events, and rallies. Falchuk would have been everywhere, but now the issue he latched onto is dead. It’s a boo-ray for him.

Shirley Leung

Amidst a deluge of predictable negativity from nearly every commentator in the city, Leung stood out as the lone voice in favor of the games. Leung created an uproar when her open letter explaining the behavior of Boston residents to the USOC was splashed prominently in the Globe. Love her or hate her, you had to read her.

Tito Jackson

Like Falchuk, Jackson used the Olympics as an opportunity to look out for his constituents while positively boosting his public profile. Jackson landed a few days’ worth of upbeat media coverage painting him as a champion of transparency and open government. Though rumors are swirling around the councillor regarding a possible mayoral campaign in 2017, his 2015 reelection in District 7 is all but guaranteed against a weak field.

Did Not Finish

The USOC

The USOC picked Boston over three other probably more suitable hosts for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Perhaps the pitch to the USOC board was straight out of the Don Draper playbook, but when it came time to deliver, Boston was nowhere near what it promised. After seven months, they managed to torpedo their mistake, but their unwillingness to cut their losses sooner may prevent them from bringing back the Olympics to the United States after a 22-year absence this time around.

The Deval Patrick Administration

The birth and death of Boston 2024 was an epilogue of sorts to Patrick’s administration. The organizationwas filled with people connected to Patrick, but in the end they were unable to recreate the magic that twice catapulted him into the State House. Even the former governor himself was unable to escape unscathed.

Former MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott was nominated for a spot on the National Transportation Safety Board by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Scott was the head of the MBTA from December 2012 until April 2015 when she resigned after the struggling transportation system collapsed under the weight of four consecutive blizzards. Prior to her resignation, Scott held a defensive press conference where she lamented the system’s poor state of repair and long term problems, calling it “not a spring chicken system.”

“We are running an extremely aged system that is getting a pounding every single day and we love it because we love our public,” said Scott.

She dismissed suggestions at the time that should should resign or consider resigning.

After her resignation from the MBTA, former highway boss Frank DePaola took over the beleagured agency on an interim basis. A number of reforms to the MBTA were recently passed on Beacon Hill, including a number of measures that are aimed at preventing a similar winter storm disaster.

If successfully appointed to the position, Scott will rake in a salary of $155,000.

Prior her time at the MBTA, Scott ran the public transportation systems in Atlanta and Sacramento.

Patriots training camp opened to the public today, giving Pats fans worn weary by months and months of stagnant Deflategate talk a respite from PSIs and busted cell phones. It was to be a safe-haven from league persecution and the hatred of 31 other ringless franchises. It was to be sacred.

Who knew there would come a time when we would yearn for the 2011 Red Sox. Sure, they crashed and burned in a blaze of chicken and beer and shame, but at least they made things interesting all the way until September. Hell, even the Great Bobby Valentine Song and Dance Revue of 2012 was at least a fount of comedy (Mazz is likely still giggling over Josh Beckett feeling woozy from a Z-Pak). This year’s team is so boring, the fanbase would rather pore over Manhattan legal filings and wax philosophical over destroyed cell phones, and it’s July.

The 2015 Red Sox are so awful, so putrid, that a fan blew chunks over the guard rail at Fenway Park, sending a shower of booted franks and $10 Bud Light cascading below. If Curt Schilling’s bloody sock was the defining symbol of ’04, and Steve Horgan the triumphant bullpen cop emblematic of 2013, this is avatar of the 2015 Red Sox: vomit raining down from above.

The Red Sox are finally completing their transformation into an Aristocrats joke.

Amidst the sweltering, swampy heat, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman promised there will soon be hockey—and it will be spectacular.

The 2016 NHL Bridgestone Winter Classic will feature longtime rivals Bruins and Montreal Canadiens facing off in their 910th match-up at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro on New Year’s Day. It will be the first time the two teams will meet outdoors.

“After all the years and all the games between these two teams, the Bruins and the Canadiens will add to the legend of their competition in a unique way,” Bettman said, “and we couldn’t be happier that our third Winter Classic between Original Six teams will take place in this outstanding stadium, Gillette Stadium—the home of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.”

Bettman said that an alumni game will take place on December 31, celebrating the rivalry’s nine decades of history. The commissioner also said there would be “all-access programming” leading up to the main event on January 1.

Fresh off a searing Deflategate press conference earlier Wednesday, New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft seemed in much better spirits. After all, the game is the realization of a boyhood dream.

“It was one that first stroked my interest in sports,” Kraft said of the Boston-Montreal rivalry. “By dating myself with this reference, I’ll tell you that I remember as a young boy, being under the covers of my bed late at night with my transistor radio under the pillows, listening to the likes of Milt Schmidt and ‘Sugar Jim’ Henry against ‘Boom-Boom’ Geoffrion and ‘Rocket’ Richard.'”

“So for me, a little kid from Fuller Street in Brookline, listening to those games, and then having these two teams come here, it’s a great thrill,” Kraft said.

Photo by Kyle Clauss

Bettman and Kraft were joined onstage by Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, CEO Charlie Jacobs, president Cam Neely, general manager Don Sweeney, and current players Patrice Bergeron, Torey Krug, and Jimmy Hayes. The Montreal delegation included owner Geoff Molson, general manager and Marc Bergevin. Hall of Famers on both sides were in attendance as well, with legendary defenseman Ray Bourque representing the B’s, and lightning-fast sniper Yvan Cournoyer.

While no jerseys were unveiled for either team, speculation fueled by the on-field logos suggests both squads will don their 1925-26 kits.

The booming real estate market around Kendall Square area is about to get a another major boost from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MIT filed plans with the Cambridge Planning Board on Tuesday that outlined a $1.2 billion proposal that features six new buildings on owned parking lots. Three research and development buildings, two new housing buildings with over 740 residential units, and a retail and office property with at least 100,000 new square feet of space.

Kendall Square is the hottest apartment market in all of Greater Boston, especially for tech and life science workers. Rents have soared in the area in the last decade but new residential towers have gradually risen from the area’s vacant lots.